What the Meta Ad Library shows
The Meta Ad Library is Meta's public, searchable archive of the ads running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network. Anyone can search it by advertiser or keyword, without logging in, and see each active ad's creative, copy, start date and platforms. Ads about social issues, elections or politics stay in the archive for seven years with spend data.
TikTok's nearest research tool is the TikTok Creative Center, which surfaces top-performing ads rather than every live ad. The Ad Library shows everything that is running, good or bad, so the signal comes from how long an ad has been live and how many versions an advertiser keeps running, not from any performance figure.
How UGC teams use it
Search the brands you compete with and filter to active ads. Look for creator-led video, note the hooks, formats and offers, and see which ads have run for weeks: an advertiser rarely keeps paying for a loser. Several near-identical ads with different openings usually means a creative testing round is under way.
Turn what you find into brief inputs, not copies. Write down the angle, the format and the first line, then brief your own creators on the angle in their own words. The UGC ad examples guide groups common structures if you need names for what you are seeing.
A worked example
A pet food startup searches three competitors. One has kept a single talking head video live for months alongside a dozen newer variants of it, all opening with a question about a dog's digestion. Another shows only static ads. The pattern says the first brand found a winner and is iterating on it.
The startup briefs four creators on the same problem the long-running ad addresses, each with a different opening and their own pet on camera. It is borrowing the insight, not the ad, and tests its own versions against its current best performer.
Common mistakes
Reading a long run time as proof of profit. It is a signal, not data: some advertisers leave ads on by inertia, and the library does not show results for commercial ads. Look for clusters of variants and repeated angles before drawing a conclusion.
Copying a competitor's ad line for line is the other trap. It invites claims problems, makes your account look like theirs, and skips the work of finding out why the angle worked. Use the library to decide what to test, then let your creators make it their own.
How it's used
Pulled the Ad Library for our top three competitors. Two of them are running creator testimonials that have been live since spring.
Don't copy their script. Note the angle from the Ad Library and brief it fresh to our creators.